Consider the end of Job. God interposes, after a severe trial of this man of God, and challenges his attention to His mighty works, and particularly in the closing chapter, to God’s great power in Leviathan. There is a blending of the literal and the metaphorical which is very striking. The literal in leviathan is no doubt the crocodile, but there are things spoken concerning leviathan in God’s challenge to Job that convince us that it is but a parable of something higher; for instance: “He beholdeth all high things; he is king over all the children of pride.” That leviathan is not a mere beast of the field, and it is said: “He that made him can make his sword to approach unto him.” Does God make war upon mere beasts of the field, of His own creation? No! What then can be signified? We have the answer in Isaiah 27, following closely upon the beautiful prophecy of the day of the resurrection concerning which it is said: “Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee, and hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be over past. For behold, the Lord cometh to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain. In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish Leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.”
We have a similar vision in Revelation, where a mighty angel lays hold upon “the Dragon, that Old Serpent, which is the Devil and Satan”, binds him, and thrusts him into the abyss for a thousand years; so that there is something beyond the merely literal in God’s challenge to Job, “Job, can you take this beast, and subdue him?”
Truly, men are too much for any literal beast of the field, especially in these days of firearms and high explosives, but who can touch that other beast? Only God; and, “He that made him can make his sword to approach unto him”, and He will do so. Then after God has brought that judgment on the scene there will be revealed anti typically something like the end of Job, who is a type of our Lord Jesus Christ. A new and happy family will surround him in the day of restitution. How beautiful is the type! The Lord “turned again the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends”; those tormenting friends; Job prayed for them and God accepted them, and is it not so with the Lord Jesus Christ, who prayed even for his enemies, who “made intercession for the transgressors”, and who is therefore exalted?
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One